Value dynamics affect choice preparation during decision-making.

During decision-making, neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) sequentially represent the value of each option in turn, but it is unclear how these dynamics are translated into a choice response. One brain region that may be implicated in this process is the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which strongly connects with OFC and contains many neurons that encode the choice response. We investigated how OFC value signals interacted with ACC neurons encoding the choice response by performing simultaneous high-channel count recordings from the two areas in nonhuman primates.

Erratum: "Causal Contributions of the Domain-General (Multiple Demand) and the Language-Selective Brain Networks to Perceptual and Semantic Challenges in Speech Comprehension".

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1162/nol_a_00081.].

Causal Contributions of the Domain-General (Multiple Demand) and the Language-Selective Brain Networks to Perceptual and Semantic Challenges in Speech Comprehension.

Listening to spoken language engages domain-general multiple demand (MD; frontoparietal) regions of the human brain, in addition to domain-selective (frontotemporal) language regions, particularly when comprehension is challenging. However, there is limited evidence that the MD network makes a functional contribution to core aspects of understanding language. In a behavioural study of volunteers ( = 19) with chronic brain lesions, but without aphasia, we assessed the causal role of these networks in perceiving, comprehending, and adapting to spoken sentences made more challenging by acoustic-degradation or lexico-semantic ambiguity.

Fast and slow contributions to decision-making in corticostriatal circuits.

We make complex decisions using both fast judgments and slower, more deliberative reasoning. For example, during value-based decision-making, animals make rapid value-guided orienting eye movements after stimulus presentation that bias the upcoming decision. The neural mechanisms underlying these processes remain unclear.

A model-based approach for targeted neurophysiology in the behaving non-human primate.

Acute neurophysiology in the behaving primate typically relies on traditional manufacturing approaches for the instrumentation necessary for recording. For example, our previous approach consisted of distributing single microelectrodes in a fixed plane situated over a circular patch of frontal cortex using conventionally-milled recording grids. With the advent of robust, multisite linear probes, and the introduction of commercially-available, high-resolution rapid prototyping systems, we have been able to improve upon traditional approaches.

Speech-accompanying gestures are not processed by the language-processing mechanisms.

Speech-accompanying gestures constitute one information channel during communication. Some have argued that processing gestures engages the brain regions that support language comprehension. However, studies that have been used as evidence for shared mechanisms suffer from one or more of the following limitations: they (a) have not directly compared activations for gesture and language processing in the same study and relied on the fallacious reverse inference (Poldrack, 2006) for interpretation, (b) relied on traditional group analyses, which are bound to overestimate overlap (e.

Mapping the Parameter Space of tDCS and Cognitive Control via Manipulation of Current Polarity and Intensity.

In the cognitive domain, enormous variation in methodological approach prompts questions about the generalizability of behavioral findings obtained from studies of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). To determine the impact of common variations in approach, we systematically manipulated two key stimulation parameters-current polarity and intensity-and assessed their impact on a task of inhibitory control (the Eriksen Flanker). Ninety participants were randomly assigned to one of nine experimental groups: three stimulation conditions (anode, sham, cathode) crossed with three intensity levels (1.

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system.

Language comprehension recruits an extended set of regions in the human brain. Is syntactic processing localized to a particular region or regions within this system, or is it distributed across the entire ensemble of brain regions that support high-level linguistic processing? Evidence from aphasic patients is more consistent with the latter possibility: damage to many different language regions and to white-matter tracts connecting them has been shown to lead to similar syntactic comprehension deficits. However, brain imaging investigations of syntactic processing continue to focus on particular regions within the language system, often parts of Broca's area and regions in the posterior temporal cortex.

A possible functional localizer for identifying brain regions sensitive to sentence-level prosody.

Investigations of how we produce and perceive prosodic patterns are not only interesting in their own right but can inform fundamental questions in language research. We here argue that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in general - and the functional localization approach in particular (e.g.